I am obese. I always have been and potentially always will be. Over the last year or so I’ve lost a lot of weight and finally found some confidence to workout and join a gym.
I’ve always had complicated feelings around working out. I was ridiculed a lot during PE at school, the boys would make horrible snarky remarks and the girls would laugh at me in the changing rooms. I used to get changed in the showers which had curtains between them (like a shower curtain) and the popular girls would press the buttons to turn the shower on so that I would have to come out half dressed, and they’d laugh at me and make cruel comments about my body.
One thing that sticks out to me is I was really unfit at 14/15, but did the cross country anyway. My mum made me go in to do it because she didn’t agree with me skipping it. It was a mix of (slow) jogging and walking for me, but I did it. I remember saying to a friend that I was proud of myself for doing my best. The most popular boy in our year overheard and started mocking me, he made cruel comments about how I’d walked part of the course and how I may as well have not shown up. I didn’t run then for 10 years.
PE teachers used to make remarks about how I wasn’t trying and didn’t put any effort in, how I’d be better off not trying or coming in. As soon as I could stop PE lessons I did.
I was using the squat machine tonight and a couple of younger girls (I’d guess late teens) were watching me and quite loudly laughed and made a comment about how they wouldn’t even bother if they were me, and that they wouldn’t be out in leggings. They kept staring and laughing at me as I moved round my workout and I ended up leaving early to just go home because I couldn’t stand it.
I know I’m mostly being silly but it’s brought back all of those feelings of shame I had from my childhood and I just want to stop working out entirely. It’s made me feel like I don’t belong there, and like I’m being silly to have tried it.